Disney And EA (Unfortunately) Enter Into Star Wars Game Agreement

Last year, the Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm which became official in December 2012 making Lucasfilm and thusly the “Star Wars” franchise a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney. This resulted in an outcry from fandoms across the world and the internet. To make matters worse, yesterday, Electronic Arts Inc, known as EA, announced they have signed a multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to development and publish new Star Wars games based on new characters and new story lines.

Under the new partnership, EA will develop Star Wars titles spanning all interactive platforms while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.

John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive, said,

“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come. Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world.”

EA Labels President Frank Gibeau, echoed his sentiments by adding,

“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe. Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay”

This is not only bad news for gamers but also Star Wars fans everywhere. EA has been under fire from the gaming community for years due to their excessively high prices, their limited DLC (that they often delete even after a consumer has already paid for it), their poorly designed games, and their inability to compromise and appease the consumers who are already angry. Their most recently release, SIMCity 2013 was one of the biggest disasters yet. The requirement to play online only to have the servers down constantly and the overall terrible reviews of the games internal programming system. Not to mention Star Wars fans will mostly likely see their favorite franchise chipped away until it is another terrible game that no one wants to play.

So what will consumers expect from the partnership? We can speculate to expect over priced DLC, downed servers, in-game expenses, and worse, a mediocre game released too soon to appease investors who don’t care about the product.

Also, just a heads up, EA has been named the worst company two years in a row.